Thanks for your response, and the anecdotes about the resilience of children are somewhat comforting. But I am married to a Tiger Mom (tm).

Regarding special talent and the gulf between excellent-to-good vs. good-to-average, wouldn't you say most subjects/pursuits/etc. are like that? I read an article about a guy who wanted to test Gladwell's "10,000 hour" rule (10k hours of practice is the magic number to attain expertise in a pursuit), by spending 10k hours on learning how to golf. A few years later, as he neared 10k hours, he was very good, but plateaued and obviously could not reach the level of professional golfers.

Sports is a low hanging fruit to put talent measurement to the test, but I'm not sure how you can identify that level of talent in any profession until you see groups of highly trained, 10k hour types, compete with each other. It certainly would be nice to separate the wheat from the chaff well in advance of that, before kids invest $$$ and time on university.

I'm sure there are several books written on the subject, but for now, I'm not a fan of the mathematical talent recognition devices US primary schools are using. :)